An academic odyssey: Writing over time

James Hartley (1) , Guillaume Cabanac (2)

1 Keele University [Keele]
2 IRIT - Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse

In this paper we present and discuss the results of six enquiries into the first author's academic writing over the last fifty years. Our aim is to assess whether or not his academic writing style has changed with age, experience, and cognitive decline. The results of these studies suggest that the readability of textbook chapters written by Hartley has remained fairly stable for over 50 years, with the later chapters becoming easier to read. The format of the titles used for chapters and papers has also remained much the same, with an increase in the use of titles written in the form of questions. It also appears that the format of the chosen titles had no effect on citation rates, but that papers that obtained the highest citation rates were written with colleagues rather by Hartley alone. Finally it is observed that Hartley's publication rate has remained much the same for over fifty years but that this has been achieved at the expense of other academic activities.

Mots clés: Academic writing; Productivity; Aging; Longitudinal study; Writing style

Domaines: Théorie de l'information [cs.IT]; Recherche d'information [cs.IR]

James Hartley, Guillaume Cabanac. An academic odyssey: Writing over time. Scientometrics, 2015, vol. 103 (n° 3), pp. 1073-1082. ⟨10.1007/s11192-015-1562-1⟩. ⟨hal-03517071⟩